Arctic Ice Hype

In September 2012, Climate Progress reported that the European Space Agency’s CryoSat-2 probe appeared to support the key concluon of the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) at the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center: Arctic sea ice volume has been collapsing much faster than sea ice area (or extent) because the ice has been getting thinner and thinner.

Now the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the UK’s primary agency for funding and managing environmental sciences research made it official. They reported the following: Arctic sea ice volume has declined by 36 per cent in the autumn and 9 per cent in the winter between 2003 and 2012, a UK-led team of scientists has discovered….

The findings confirm the continuing decline in Arctic sea-ice volume simulated by the Pan-Arctic Ice-Ocean Modelling & Assimilation System (PIOMAS), which estimates the volume of Arctic sea ice and had been checked using earlier submarine, mooring, and satellite observations until 2008.

If this is true, and I have my doubts, this should be the story of the day, week, month, year, and decade. As NERC notes, sea ice volume is “a much more accurate indicator of the changes taking place in the Arctic.”

Many experts now say that if recent volume trends continue we will see a “near ice-free Arctic in summer” within a decade. And that may well usher in a permanent change toward extreme, prolonged weather events “Such As Drought, Flooding, Cold Spells And Heat Waves.” 

I just wonder if this is just another illuminati hype job. In fact, I have read that Antarctic ice is growing. Perhaps this is a natural pendulum swing. I recently saw a program on TV that showed satellite video from space and during the winter the Antarctic ice grows to the size of the continent of Africa. This ice is critical to the production of plankton that eventually blooms and feeds almost all the sea life in the Pacific and other areas.